Letters Of Sir Walter Ralegh

Cloth $93.00ISBN: 9780859895279
Published
January 1999
For sale in North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand only

This edition of the letters of Sir Walter Ralegh will replace the long out-of-print edition of Edward Edwards published in 1868. It contains the full text, in the original spelling, with modern punctuation, of all known surviving letters, 240 in all, compared with Edwards' 160, in most cases taken from the original manuscripts, many never before published. All are extensively annotated, many have been newly dated and corrected; there is a substantial Introduction by Joyce Youings.

The letters help to reconcile the family man, never happier than at home on his estate in the West Country, with one who is revered, especially in North America, as the founder and inspirer of English overseas settlement. They show him drawn both towards his native West Country, where he was not universally admired, and towards the Court at Westminster where lay the determination of the success or failure of his enterprises. Never before have we been able to get as near to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of one of the best-known figures of English history, the man who was both patriot and European; courtier and failed politician; soldier and poet; owner of ships and organiser of privateering ventures yet a reluctant sailor; greedy for personal wealth and social status but apparently ready to plead the case of the poor and disadvantaged.

Introduction The Collection Previous Publication of the Letters A Brief Biography: Sir Walter Ralegh 1554-1618 The Recipients of the Letters The Subject Matter of the Letters Ireland and Virginia Ships, Privateering and the Sea Wars The Queen and the Court Patronage The Sherborne Estate The Westcountryman Guiana The Man behind the Pen The Writing of the Letters Spelling and Style Ralegh's Clerks and Carriers Editorial Conventions Acknowledgements

“The University of Exeter Press has done the proud Devon man proud. The book is well printed and generously illustrated. Students will be grateful for plates of holograph letters which illustrate the varying forms of Ralegh's hand, and include an example of a sketch of a scaffold or gallows that he use to emphasize the message 'hast post hast! hast for life'.” –TLS, October 22 1999

South West Soundings

“ . . . this substantial volume brings together all that is known of his correspondence, uncollected since 1868 and much expanded and refined. Students of history and literature will grasp at this book as it throws a beam across the glorious, if storm - tossed, life of one of the more attractive (perhaps the most attractive) personality of a late Tudor and early Jacobean statesman, poet and adventurer. . . Joyce Youings has done a fine job. She has given us the essentials of Agnes Latham's long labours and added her own academic and editing skills to make the volume one of the finest editions to English Renaissance scholarship we are likely to see in this last year of the millennium.” –South West Soundings, October 1999

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu